The great toaster hoax

Lesley Fernández-Armesto on a superior cake for Christmas

Reading Laura Mauro’s “Japanese Toilet Ghosts” [FT459:30-35], reminded me of a less well known fear in the Western world, which –according to the modern rabbinical Internet resource site TheTorah.com

Today’s queues may be digital, but the fight to secure that must-have present and avoid small, disappointed faces is timeless. Tom Howells looks at the toys topping recent (and less recent) Christmas wish lists

→ When the Tudor poet Thomas Tusser wrote of “Turkey wel drest” as part of a Christmas feast in 1573, he was in fact taking part in a trend new to these shores. Turkeys, those red-necked birds who gob

The imagination muscle WOULD you move ...

Chess sets and backgammon boards are a familiar sight on drawing-room tables, but one expert Highland woodworker is refashioning their forms in beautiful new ways, writes Mary Miers